Please help us continue to provide you with free, quality journalism by turning off your ad blocker on our site.

Thank you for signing in.

If this is your first time registering, please check your inbox for more information about the benefits of your Forbes account and what you can do next!

I agree to receive occasional updates and announcements about Forbes products and services. You may opt out at any time.

I'd like to receive the Forbes Daily Dozen newsletter to get the top 12 headlines every morning.

Forbes takes privacy seriously and is committed to transparency. We will never share your email address with third parties without your permission. By signing in, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Statement.

How to Hire Pro Players: An Interview With Forbes Small Giant Behfar Jahanshahi

InterWorks' global team keeps a tight cultural connection through co-working, when possible.

Photo provided by InterWorks.

Behfar Jahanshahi didn’t start out with the idea to be an entrepreneur. He only knew he had lot of fun playing around in the computer labs at Oklahoma State University growing up, where both his parents worked.

As a college student in the 1990s, he stopped by the local computer store and asked the sales clerks if they had customers who needed help installing their computers. First one customer called, then another.

Today, Jahanshahi’s company InterWorks is a $57 million business with 175 employees all over the globe. They were named a Forbes Small Giant earlier this year.

Like the work Jahanshahi started as a college student, InterWorks continues to help clients with their IT system needs. They also partner with Tableau to provide services for Tableau customers, a partnership that has accelerated InterWorks’ growth. “We went from an Oklahoma-based IT services company serving the local region to working our way through the Fortune 50 to consult on their data and analytics needs,” Jahanshahi said. “It’s been an amazing Small Giants journey, long before I’d heard of the Forbes Small Giant list.”

As their customers grew more global, so did the InterWorks team. We recently sat down with Jahanshani to ask him how he built a tech empire from Stillwater, Oklahoma, and how InterWorks keeps a close-knit team that spans time zones and borders.

Tell us about your team.

I use a lot of sports analogies. You know how you have JV [junior varsity], then varsity, then junior college, college, and pro? We try to hire people that are pro or clearly going pro. Our customers are looking to us to bring a lot of skills to the table. We’re a small group, and we understand everyone else’s strengths. It’s a lot like a SWAT team of people, working from Oklahoma, Chicago, Portland, DC, New York, LA, Germany and Belgium, Australia, Singapore, etc.

How do you keep a strong connection to the company and to each other, when your team is global?

What we are finding is that, frankly, it takes less calories to keep people close culturally when they are around other InterWorks people all the time. The minute they’re remote, you have to expend more energy to keep them close than you would someone who’s in an office. So we try to get density in places like Portland, where we have a WeWork office, or Chicago or New York. We have little tribes, if you will.

In Stillwater, Oklahoma, where it’s a tiny community, everyone knows everyone. My kid plays soccer with half the kids in this building. It’s just part of the culture. I want to try and keep that in these other locations as much as possible. So in Portland, we use the WeWork patio and grill. We get everyone to just spend time together. The people that work more remotely, that are on their own islands, we try to get them to fly in for a few days. Just to be in the office. We try to choreograph the timing of meetings so we can spend a little time together. It ends up being fun.

Based in Oklahoma, InterWorks has grown to be a global company by building for density in key ... [+] markets.

Photo provided by InterWorks.

What about in between times together?

One of the people here pitched this idea called a Bev Bash. So now in Slack we have a channel called Bev Bash. What we do is, every week at a certain time they get the Bev Bash group together. Whoever is available, they just all get on a big video call; it may be five people and it may be 40 people. It is literally a virtual social hour.

Video is actually an important part of us staying connected. It helps us stay connected and focused with each other. They can see if you’re kind of looking down and your fingers are typing. I mean even if they don't see your fingers, they can see your shoulders and tell you’re not paying attention. I’m fascinated by those little details during an interaction that makes people feel connected, not just churning day to day through a job.

Let’s talk about hiring. How do you get those pro players?

What we’re looking for is, can this person tell a good story, can they communicate, and can we connect with them? We ask people to do a presentation as part of the interview process; we don’t care what they talk about, we just want to see how they present. Do they understand their own audience? Did they find a way to interact with everybody on the panel? Were they kind to everyone along the way or just focused on impressing who they assumed were the top people? We’ve had a lot of people who were just complete jerks to those behind the scenes and we absolutely take notice of that.

We come in at top bill rates, so clients have to really want us to get their procurement groups to use us. Writing and communication is really important for how we talk with our clients. The better people communicate, the less friction there’s going to be. People hire us because they like our approach, the fact that we can solve a problem; but at the end of the day, it's because they like whoever they're getting from InterWorks.

For us, when we’re hiring, they’re either a “Hell yes!” or a no. We go around the circle [of those who interviewed the candidate] and ask, What did you think? You can hear if they want that person. When someone amazing comes in, everyone goes, “That person was great. They’re going to be a star.” If our feeling after the roundup is not hell yes, then we just walk. I’m sure we’ve lost out on a few great candidates, but it is rare that we hire bad candidates.

Can you afford to be that selective? It’s a tough job market for employers in technology firms.

Yes, for a couple of reasons. First, we’re not trying to grow our headcount at a pace we can’t keep up with. I think it’s easier because we’re not hiring quickly. I also think that over the years, because we’ve been selective in what we do and how we put ourselves out there to the world, and being very honest and genuine about who we are—there’s a certain kind of person that really wants to work here. And while Google, Apple or Deloitte may be neat, that’s often not quite what they’re looking for.

We work at the Center for Values-Driven Leadership, at Benedictine University, where we study and consult with performance-focused, values-driven companies to understand

…

We work at the Center for Values-Driven Leadership, at Benedictine University, where we study and consult with performance-focused, values-driven companies to understand their pain points and help them thrive. We know creating a strong, values-driven culture is complex work. In our column, we tackle the obstacles and opportunities business leaders find as they try to do business the right way – by caring for people while winning in the marketplace. Our insights come from hard-earned experience: Jim Ludema, Ph.D., is the Center’s director, a professor of global leadership, and a consultant to companies around the world. Amber Johnson is the Center’s chief communications officer and specialist in helping companies connect their mission and values to their brand and strategy. Learn more about our work at http://cvdl.ben.edu.